Victor Segalen (1878-1919) was a doctor and archaeologist who travelled
extensively in Polynesia and China. He was also a great poet, and as befits an
admirer of Gauguin and Rimbaud, the journey made in this, his last and most
important work, is not so much between points on a map, as between the imagined
and the real. Journey to the Land of the Real (Equipée in French) is
"not a poem about a journey, nor is it the travel diary of a wanderer's dream". In fact, it
is the summation of the author's life as both traveller and poet, and a
summation all the more surprising because he was to die in highly mysterious
circumstances soon after it was written.

Journey to the Land of the Real appeared posthumously in 1929 and tells, in
part, of Segalen's expedition through China to the borders of Tibet in the years
of the First World War. It recounts both real adventures in a country now lost
to time (a tremendous river descent, for example), but more abstruse and
unknowable events too. Segalen described his book as lying "between what one
dreams of and what one does, between what one desires and what one obtains;
between the summit conquered by a metaphor and the altitude reached on foot by
exertion … between the winged dance of the idea and the tough march along the
road". Segalen the traveller returned home, undoubtedly changed by his
experiences; but Segalen the poet immediately set out on another journey from
imaginary to real: that of casting into words the images of his travels, so that
they might unfold anew in the mind of the reader.

Here is a masterpiece that effortlessly takes its place among the classics of
"travel writing" precisely because it is so much more than that; among its brief
chapters are consummate prose poems that reveal a lucid, eloquent and very
likable author at the height of his powers.

Segalen's works have taken a long while to be appreciated. In France he is
now often bracketed with Claude Lévi-Strauss and Michel Leiris as one of the
first writers to bring a post-colonial perspective to the encounter with foreign
cultures. He was, of course, the earliest of these three, and proposed a "theory
of exoticism" opposed to the homogenisation inflicted by imperialist norms and
their agents: colonial administrators and the Christian missionaries (who suffer
particular scorn in this book). This underpinning makes Journey to the Land of
the Real particularly modern despite its date of composition.

136pp., hardback with decorated end papers.

FORTHCOMING

Journal 13 of the London Institute of 'Pataphysics: THIERI FOULC, An Exhibition
of Non-Painted Paintings. This should be ready for the event on 4 November,
details to follow.

JULY 2016

New and Forthcoming Publications, and a Forthcoming Event

Comrades of Atlas Press,

Anicet is here!

In the centenary year* of the first Dada manifestations, at the Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich,
we are pleased to present Anicet ou le Panorama, a Dada novel by one of the movement's
leading early lights and founding members, in its French group, Louis Aragon. An
important book, and a thoroughly entertaining read, which as ever will be available
to those responding to this newsletter at a discounted price for an introductory few
weeks.

*a person could be forgiven for missing this anniversary, in the UK at least, amidst all
the deafening round of exhibitions and commemorative articles in the media

In connection with this publication there is an important erratum to point out since
the copyright notice has been inadvertently omitted; with full apologies to Editions
Gallimard we should like to state it clearly here and also on the book's individual page-listing:

Further details on this title follow below, together with similar information on the
latest issue of the Journal of the LIP (paid-up subscribers will have already
received their copies).

Looking ahead, Atlas is excited to be publishing this autumn a remarkable book by the under-sung
Victor Segalen, Journey to the Land of the Real (a translation of his posthumous book
Equipée), while the next issue of the Journal is also in preparation, being An Exhibition of
Non-Painted Paintings, by Thieri Foulc. More news on these two will follow in due course.

Forthcoming Event, for Saturday 5 November: kindly fold down a corner of the page
of your diary for the weekend of the Small Publishers Fair in early November in
central London, and keep warm the edge of your seat for further details concerning this
auspicious occasion.

Originally published in 1921, Anicet ou le Panorama was the first book written
by Louis Aragon, the writing begun while he was serving as a medical orderly on the
Western Front and only a few months after his friendship with André Breton had begun.
Aragon saw trench warfare at some of its worst and suffered personally by being buried
by shell explosions on several occasions, and whilst it is evident that the futility
and some of the horror of war makes its mark on his novel it is equally clear how
much separates this work from those of the English War poets, for example. In a
world that has been wholly recast amidst senseless conflict and the abandonment
of all moral standing it could be argued what place was left for writing at all,
let alone such an ostensibly traditional form as the novel, but as if through a
minefield Aragon plots his course and describes a grand design which details the
systematic dismantling of culture and personal identity. Scenes that may or may
not be taking place on stage-sets, or in the context of silent movies, move the
narrative along with its cast of characters drawn from Aragon's friends and
acquaintances as the protagonist becomes enmired, one might say, in the scandals
and outrageous crimes sweeping through a panorama of Paris society. Personal values
are confounded and literary heroes confronted and displaced, but Anicet himself
acknowledges the sequence of events with a spirit of ironic integrity and nonchalance
through to the very end.

Citing this as a Dada novel does not mean it is distinguished by adventurous
typography or the like, and in fact Aragon's prose is not only by turns sardonic,
arch or parodic but throughout very precisely crafted. There are passages, for
instance, where a character speaks as Voltaire wrote, a sly and difficult effect
to bring off while at the same time a curious echo of the café in Zurich. The
language elsewhere moves from such higher antiquated registers to slapstick
passages or the vernacular of crooks and market-traders, the considerable challenges
of all of which have been translated with exceptional sensitivity by Antony Melville.

This raucous whirlwind of a book not only marked the start of Aragon's literary career
but is also one of the cornerstones of the Paris Dada movement. We would submit as
well that it may be his finest work.

From the London Institute of 'Pataphysics

Journal of the LIP number 12, Disquisition on the Difficulty of Communicating with
the Dead, by Giorgio Manganelli, accompanied by texts and related material bearing
on that subject: seance transcriptions by Victor Hugo, windows on the hereafter by
Donald Parsnips of that ilk, the Society of Psychical Research's position on spirit
photography and Vera Rowley's reflections on the same, the whole embellished with
inkblots courtesy of Peter Blegvad and other hands and a few late thoughts from
Oscar Wilde. A vade-mecum for us all in these dark, post-referendum days.

138pp., abundantly illustrated throughout in colour and black-and-white, paper
covers. Published in both standard and special editions, all numbered, at £15 / £22.50.

NOVEMBER 2015

New and Forthcoming Publications

It is with considerable pleasure that we are able to announce that one of our
greatest publications is now available again, the ultimate artists' book here
reissued 20 years after its first publication by Atlas Press* and now presented
in a new format: An Anecdoted Topography of Chance. A little more
information follows below on this edition, although we are aware that many of
our supporters will already be familiar with this book, and as usual it will be
available at a discounted launch price for an introductory period.

*in its probably definitive re-anecdoted
version

The next issue of the Journal of the LIP is currently in preparation, set to
appear early in the new year (vulg.) and with an outline of its otherworldly
contents also noted below. Otherwise, the next publication to appear from Atlas
will be the long-awaited Anicet, or The Panorama by Aragon,
scheduled for the summer and sure to oust every other beach book and holiday
read.

From Atlas Press

Daniel Spoerri, with the help of his very dear friends Robert Filliou,
Emmett Williams and Dieter Roth, with drawings by Topor, An Anecdoted
Topography of Chance. 274 pp., hardback, £18.99.

By now the Topography should need little in the way of introduction,
but a quick recapitulation of the background to our edition of this work will
serve as a reminder of what it's all about. One day in 1961, Daniel Spoerri
mapped the outlines of the various objects lying randomly on the table in his
room, using tracing paper and taking care to include even wine stains and the
debris of broken eggshells, and then added a key which consisted of a factual
documentation of each item's description, origin and any persons associated
with it. This first version of the Topography came out three months
later in lieu of an exhibition catalogue for Spoerri's show at the Galerie
Lawrence in Paris, as a booklet of 54 pages. Robert Filliou had helped Spoerri
with this, and a couple of years later Emmett Williams began translating it
into English, with this edition later appearing under the Dick Higgins imprint
of Something Else Press, in New York.

In the course of this translation work Williams was moved to add notes to
the plain object descriptions, as Spoerri also added notes of his own, and on
occasion the two provided notes to each other's notes, while Topor added his
pictures of the listed items. Four years on, the German translation by Dieter
Roth appeared, furnished with further notes and anecdotes by him, and more
again by Spoerri, as the book continued to grow. In 1995 all of these texts
were collected together for the first time in the Atlas Press edition, along
with new material in the form of annotations by three of the authors (Spoerri,
Williams, Roth), a new and extensive Introduction and several photographs.

If that summary accounts for the book, it gives next to nothing away about
the book's contents, for the reader soon discovers that from such a disarmingly
simple original idea that map of the table's features reveals a landscape of
reflections and associations, memories and counterpoints, that bring in all
manner of connections with the world around us. The anecdotes branching off
from the individual objects repeatedly fascinate, inform and entertain in their
different measures, all held together by the camaraderie and bon esprit
of the book's authors. Furthermore, a cast of characters from the contemporary
art world, and from outside it, animate the text through their own
contributions or participations, as is clear from the substantial index (which
is very much a correlate to the main text itself). In all this, the
Topography both embodies and pre-dates the spirit of Fluxus, with which
its authors and many of the key names mentioned in the book are linked, and
indeed its appeal succeeds in reaching far beyond the confines of an art
movement to become something that touches us all with its celebration of
creativity and humanity.

This new edition takes the text of the earlier Arkhive edition and re-casts
it into our hardback format, with the addition of illustrated endpapers showing
the map, its original drawing and Spoerri's room. To conclude, we add here the
review for the 1995 edition that was written by Richard Hamilton:

Forthcoming

Louis Aragon, Anicet, or The Panorama.

The first, and best book by the author of Paris Peasant amongst many
other volumes, a Dada novel from 1921 appearing for the first time in English
translation. The writing was begun while Aragon was at the front during the
First World War and then completed on his return to Paris, and depicts a
systematic rejection of all ways of life society could offer at the time,
interwoven with the idiosyncratic poeticising of certain elements of the same
society as the author assembles a history of fundamental liquidation in
which everything he admires is put to the most strenuous examination.

From the London Institute of 'Pataphysics

Journal of the LIP number 12, Disquisition on the Difficulty of Communicating
with the Dead, by Giorgio Manganelli, accompanied by texts and related material
bearing on that subject: seance transcriptions by Victor Hugo, windows on the
hereafter by Donald Parsnips of that ilk, the Society of Psychical Research's
position on spirit photography and Vera Rowley's reflections on the same, the
whole embellished with inkblots courtesy of Peter Blegvad and other hands and a
few late thoughts from Oscar Wilde. A vade-mecum for us all in these dark,
winter months.

138pp., abundantly illustrated throughout in colour and black-and-white, paper
covers, price to be announced. Published in both standard and special editions.

NOVEMBER 2015

Review of Sam Dunn in TLS

For those who missed it, a welcome review of Sam Dunn is Dead
from the Times Literary Supplement of 6 November:

Atlas Press will be at the small press bookfair at the beginning of
November when we hope to have copies of the new edition of An Anecdoted
Topography of Chance. There will probably be a private view opening on the
evening before,
get in touch
if you'd like to come to that.

JUNE 2015

New publications

Dear Friends of Atlas Press,

Following the notice of forthcoming titles in the last newsletter, in
March, we are now pleased to confirm that the Grand Jeu book has been
published, and so too Sam Dunn is Dead — we are awaiting delivery of
the latter but expect this in a week’s time or thereabouts, so any
orders for this or including this title may be regarded as pre-orders
and we’ll post them off as soon as we get copies.

The next issue of the Journal of the LIP has also now appeared, together
with the Institute’s first Supplement to the Journal, and details for all
publications follow together with links to their individual pages; the first
two will be available at their special launch prices through until the end of
July.

When a group of school-friends in Reims in the early 1920s found they had
a shared passion for the poètes maudits of the 19th century and certain
orientalist and esoteric learning, they soon came to recognise each other as
kindred spirits. They formed a sort of secret society, with strict codes of
conduct and new names for themselves, and a mythology in which they were
characterised as types of angels, each with different personalities and
attributes. Taking their belief in their own invulnerability into the wider
world in order to test themselves with ever more extreme states and experiences,
the group found their various enquiries beginning to coalesce into a coherent
project. Thus, the controlled use of narcotics and stimulants was accompanied by
experiments in perception by occult or parapsychological means, eventually
leading to a system of “experimental metaphysics” intended to show
that the same liberation of the mind they believed they had discovered could
be achieved by everyone.

This was the Grand Jeu, the group of artists and writers that became focused
around core members René Daumal and Roger Gilbert-Lecomte in 1929. On moving to
Paris their encounters with other artistic movements culminated in a falling out
with André Breton; having been initially courted by the Surrealists, they found
themselves ostracised from any association with the movement, but this only
intensified their dissident energy, and investigations which had been touched
on earlier were now pursued with greater zeal.

As was ever the case, they founded a magazine, and the contributors to Le Grand
Jeu included not only Daumal and Gilbert-Lecomte but also their friend Roger
Vailland, the poet and artist Maurice Henry, the photographer Artür Harfaux and
a number of other fellow travellers. The review ran to three issues (a fourth was
left unpublished), but covered a wide range of topics that reveal the group’s
uncompromising politico-mystical outlook and excoriating critique of contemporary
Western society, while at the same time urging a cult of abnegation and self-immolation
of the ego, allied to leftist revolutionary politics. All of this is expressed in
a style that is markedly fresh and articulate throughout, while managing to be concise
in its rational voice as well as arch and even torrential once the shackles are
removed. Gilbert-Lecomte especially is the figure ripe for rediscovery here, a
prophetic poet in the mode of Artaud (who uniquely wrote the preface to
Gilbert-Lecomte’s first book of poems) whose work remains scandalously
under-valued even in France. The issues of Le Grand Jeu contain critical writing
too, a special issue devoted to Rimbaud, with superb essays by Vailland and
Gilbert-Lecomte, and, less eulogistically, Daumal’s ongoing polemic with Breton
and the Surrealist movement.

Had these texts been translated and published in the 1960s they could not have
found a more sympathetic audience than the counter-culture of the day, and plenty
of us would no doubt now be familiar with the Grand Jeu as a result, perhaps even
more so than any of the other avant-garde movements of their time. As it is, this
is the first, and definitive collection of these writers’ works to appear in
English, and introduces the group’s short-lived flowering in all the blaze
of its youthful brilliance.

First English translation, in the centenary year of its original publication

While the big wheels of Marinetti’s Futurism were turning out the bombast
which typically marks the literary activities of that movement, Bruno Corra, at
the time a participating Futurist, was engaged with writing a quite different work
altogether. Sam Dunn is Dead, written in 1914 and first published the
following year, was variously described by Corra as a “Synthetic Novel”,
a “Futurist Novel” and ultimately just as “an unusual story”,
and if that last label sounds disparaging from an author who came to regard his book
as a failure, it is abundantly clear reading it today that the book is a rather
special kind of triumph, whose merits have certainly endured and for which unusual
is a most fitting description — albeit in understatement.

This is a conspicuously brief novel, but it is packed with elements of grotesquerie
and the bizarre, with main characters whose outlandish quirks of behaviour and strangely
superhuman powers lead them into vast set-piece scenes played out across an international
stage, all orchestrated by the most surprising turns of absurdity. The action is set in
the 1950s, which can be seen as a means to explore utopian ideas prevalent at the time
Corra was writing, and as the narrative moves through passages marked with a certain
languor to others tumbling on at breakneck speed the reader is caught up in a ferment
of odd scientific theories and occultism at the same time as being wrongfooted by outbursts
of high farce, black humour and on occasion authorial irony.

The Grand Guignol of Sam Dunn ensured it was a success of sorts at the time,
and this “unusual story” had gone through five editions by 1928; thereafter
though, it largely became a forgotten masterpiece, in effect written out of Futurist
history and long out of print in Italy itself. This first English translation includes
the six illustrations by Rosa Rosà for the book, her style revealing her
association with the group of Futurists based in Florence as well as wonderfully
evoking the spirit of Corra’s text.

From the London Institute of ’Pataphysics

Journal of the LIP number 11, Characteristics Particular to the European Elephant,
by Pascal Varejka, Regent of Elephantology at the Collège de ’Pataphysique,
translated by Florence Uniacke. 98pp., plentifully illustrated throughout in colour
and black-and-white, paper covers, £15 (£22 signed).
The Journal of the LIP

A translation of Singularité de l’éléphant d’Europe,
augmented with several newly sourced illustrations, which fills an inexplicable hole in
the natural history of the pachyderm tribe. No home should be without a copy of this
indispensable guide to one of the most significant, if under-sung examples of European fauna.

Published in both standard and signed editions.

Journal of the LIP, Supplement 1, On the Location of the Archæopteryx in Piero
della Francesca’s “Nativity”, by Adam Dant, Regent of Restitutive
and Subliminal Imagery at the Collège de ’Pataphysique. 16pp., paper covers.
Out of print

Transcript with pictorial details from the Inaugural Lecture delivered by Dant upon
his appointment as Regent, clearly dissecting the earlier painting for its subliminal
elements and in the text revealing the work in progress and various re-draftings which
underlie this scholarly research.

Published in both standard and signed editions for members of the London Institute
of ’Pataphysics.

MARCH 2015

Forthcoming in April

(number 11) will consist of a translation
of Singularité de l'éléphant d'Europe by Pascal Varejka, Regent of
Elephantology at the Collège de 'Pataphysique.

"An important and sly work of erudition which effortlessly tramples
terrestrial and metaphysical epistemological boundaries while simultaneously
delineating a new realm in emblematic and metaphorical elephant studies."

Forthcoming in June

Sam Dunn is Dead was described by its author as a "Futurist Novel" and was first
published in book form by Filippo Marinetti's Edizioni Futuriste. However, one will
search in vain for any mention of this work in anthologies or histories of Futurism.

Sam Dunn's erasure from literary history is doubtless because it is so unlike
anything else produced by Futurism (so ardent, so masculine, so positive and so
absurdly serious). Sam Dunn is none of these, but what it is, above all else,
is a great small masterpiece of black humour — and humour is the last thing one
was likely to associate with the posturings of Marinetti and his acolytes.

Moreover, not only is Sam Dunn at once funny, despairing, cerebral and ludicrous,
but it also traces a history in miniature of the modern spirit. It commences with a
description of its eponymous hero, a languid 1890s poet who is about to unleash a
thoroughly contemporary apocalypse upon the world; the following chapters could be
mistaken for Dadaist or Surrealist texts (but written a decade before their time),
and then the whole edifice is fatally undermined by forces that are both banal
and… unusual (to avoid revealing too much).

Corra subsequently considered his novel a failure (as an afterword to a later
edition reveals) but he was mistaken. His sensitivity to the great undertows of
history that were then working their way to the surface seems alarmingly prescient
— and anyway his opinion does nothing to inhibit the reader's simple enjoyment of
the novel's deliriously ebullient nihilism.

AN IMPORTANT PUBLISHING EVENT: THE FIRST ANTHOLOGY IN ENGLISH OF
LE GRAND JEU

Between 1928 and 1930, the Paris magazine Le Grand Jeu (The Great Game)
ran to three published issues before collapsing because of its editors' infighting,
narcotic over-indulgence and vehemently unreasonable aspirations for both art and
life. During its brief period of activity, however, Le Grand Jeu was more than
simply one of the many little magazines which flickered and vanished in the orbit
of the Surrealist movement. The journal was the public face of a tightly-bound
group of very young artists and writers who since adolescence had systematically
attacked their perceptions of reality by means such as drugs, anaesthesia and
near-death experiences.

Le Grand Jeu describes their politico-mystical outlook, one which combined
a critique of the apathy and repression of contemporary Western society with a
quest to take leave of the individual ego and to reconnect with a collective
Universal Mind. The group's esoteric programme united drug use and parapsychological
practices with asceticism, revolutionary politics (the Russian Revolution was barely
a decade old) and a prophetic mode of poetry which they identified in antecedents
including Rimbaud and Mallarmé. Such a wildly over-ripe synthesis was no doubt
inevitably doomed, but in its failure the Grand Jeu group left an indelible mark on
the history of those movements which have refused point-blank to accept the world
as it is.

In this collection, the theory of the Grand Jeu is presented in the group's own
words, through the essays and articles which formed the bulk of their magazine.

"It was our intention that in reading Le Grand Jeu people would
finally find themselves face to face with themselves:
THIS WAS IN ORDER TO MAKE THEM DESPAIR."

JULY 2014

New publications available from Atlas Press and the London Institute
of ’Pataphysics, with a coincidentally musical theme.

AVAILABLE NOW

A Mammal’s Notebook is now available direct from us at the launch price of £12 + p&p for orders
received between now and the end of August.

A welcome return to print for our celebrated selection of a wide range of writings by Satie, and still the
most comprehensive to have appeared in English translation. The choice of texts was put together by
Ornella Volta, of the Fondation Erik Satie, and comprises texts written for performance (including those not
to be read aloud), texts written for publication (not least of which are the excerpts from the Memoirs of an
Amnesic) and an extended group of private writings amongst which are a number of the private
advertisements Satie put together and which describe a very personal other-world. A catalogue of literary
and musical works is followed by extensive notes and a bibliography.

The book, which previously formed part of our Arkhive series, now appears in the new hardcover design, with
decorative endpapers, and is abundantly illustrated throughout.

This is the latest of our publications in a series of reprints. We hope to get our most important titles
back into print prior to commencing publishing new titles that will not be available through conventional
outlets, one in particular that seems determined to eliminate non-electronic publishing.

Issue number 8 of the Journal of the LIP, Albus Liber I: Exploits and Opinions of John White, Composer,
presents a detailed survey from B-Y of the career, influences and reflections of pianist and prolific composer (to the
Institute, as well) John White. Discography listings and other entries are interconnected to provide a fuller description by
association, with separate articles on Cardew and Satie, machine pieces and systems, as well as many others, all introduced by
an extended preface by Gavin Bryars. Illustrated throughout, and also available in a signed edition.

Issue number 9, Albus Liber II: The Music of John White, is a companion to the previous issue and
contains notes by White on a number of his compositions in the form of track listings (a couple of CDs are duly included).

Please note that issues 8 and 9 are sold as a pair and are not available to buy separately.

They are available direct from us at the combined price of £30 + p&p, with members of the Institute receiving as usual a
discount on this price, now a third off.

NEW TITLES

3 New York Dadas and the Blind Man is now available direct from us at the launch price of £10 + p&p for orders
received between now and the end of February.

This volume presents the first English translation of Henri-Pierre Roché's "novel" Victor, the story of
the triangular relationship between Duchamp, Roché and Wood in New York in 1917. A facsimile follows of
the Dada magazine the three produced, The Blind Man, as well as Wood's recollections of these events as
taken from her memoirs.

Introduction and commentary by Dawn Ades, the well-known scholar of
Dada and Surrealism.

Don't Tell Sybil is now available direct from us at the launch price of £10 + p&p for orders received between now
and the end of February.

In addition to Melly's reputation as a jazz singer and celebrated bon viveur, his talents as a raconteur found a warm and
thoroughly entertaining outlet in this autobiographical volume which concentrates in particular on the author's lifelong
attachment to Surrealism, and his first-hand experience of the movement's struggles in an English context.

This new edition of Melly's title is augmented with previously unpublished photographs relating to him and to English Surrealism.

Aurora & Cardinal Point is now available direct from us at the launch price of
£10 + p&p for orders received between now and the end of February.

A welcome return to print in a slightly revised edition of our earlier publications of Leiris's
astonishing novel-length work Aurora together with the shorter text Cardinal Point which originally
appeared in our very first Anti-Classics collection, The Automatic Muse.

ATLAS AT THE SMALL PUBLISHERS FAIR

Come and meet us at the Small Publishers' Fair, this year more lively than ever.
We will have new titles and op titles for sale.

Recent issues of the Journal of the London Institute of ’Pataphysics.
Special offers!
Our new titles will be:
Marcel Duchamp, Henri-Pierre Roché, Beatrice Wood 3 New York Dadas and The Blind Man
George Melly Don't Tell Sybil
Michel Leiris Aurora and Cardinal Point

If you'd like information about the Private view on Thursday evening, no doubt with drinks
afterwards, contact us direct at editor@atlaspress.co.uk. We may have limited tickets for this,
so first come first served...

June 2013

NEW TITLES

Paypal comes to Atlas Press

We are pleased to announce that in addition
to other means of payment we are now set up to accept Paypal as
well, so those preferring to use this method are welcome to do so.

This second edition of Winter Journeys is almost exactly twice the size of the previous
version we published in 2001, thus amply demonstrating how busy oulipians keep themselves.
It contains 21 narratives, the last three of which were written only this year.
See Winter Journeys for further description.

It has always been our custom to sell our books at a special rate from the website
for the first month after publication, and for this launch period the new and augmented
Winter Journeys will be available for £15 until the end of July.

AS AN ADDITIONAL OFFER, and for the same period, purchasers of the hardback may buy a
copy of the first edition of 2001 at the special price of £12, for as long as copies
remain available (these are the last ones now). Our regular readers will recall that
this is a true first edition, since Winter Journeys has yet to be published as
an integral trade edition in French. After July any remaining copies of this edition
will be sold for ever increasing prices in accordance with the conventions of bibliophilia.

AT PRESS AND AVAILABLE IN A COUPLE OF WEEKS

These titles will be with us by the end of June but may
be ordered now in advance, with books to be sent out as soon as we actually receive
copies. For anyone ordering either of these along with Winter Journeys we will hold
the latter back until we can send all titles in one package, to minimise the
iniquitous effects of the inflated postal rates the Post Office obliges us to work
with these days.

A truly astounding book that you are unlikely ever to have heard of
(owing to its being lost for 100 years). See The Tutu
for further details.

NOTE: Currently paid-up subscribers to the LIP will be receiving their subscription
copies once this is back from the printers, while members of the Institute will be
aware that they receive a 25% discount on the price of all its publications. For
instructions on how to subscribe go to the LIP membership page.

This distinctly scurrilous piece of historical research was originally published as
the Introduction to Rhoïdis's remarkable novel Pope Joan, but does not
appear in the English translation by Lawrence Durrell (nor in the French by
Alfred Jarry, for that matter). This is the first complete English version, since
it restores, and translates, all the censored sections to the version of 1886
(now exceedingly rare).

Only available directly from us (although listed on Amazon), this sixth issue of the Journal of the LIP contains
the complete shooting script for the film starring Tony Hancock (titled "Call Me Genius" in the USA). No script
has been previously published, and this one contains significant variants with the film as released, including
scenes that ended up being cut. Illustrated throughout with colour reproductions of the artworks reconstructed
by the Institute for the Hancock retrospective of 2002.

Numbered limited edition of 500 copies, £15 + p&p (£11 to members). There are 44 copies signed by the
authors at £26 + p&p. By arrangement, copies can be collected from Bookartbookshop if you wish to
avoid (the now extortionate) postal charges.

We do welcome suggestions and submissions for books that fall within our main publishing
programme: namely the avant-gardes of the last 200 years (principally in translation).
Contact the editorial address first please. Note, however, that it is almost never worth
sending us first novels (we get a lot), and poetry not at all. Atlas is a small outfit and
publishing first novels requires resources we simply don't have (a publicity department for example!).

ATLAS IN THE USA

Since our last news bulletin we have been working on setting up a publishing programme and distribution
in the USA. From Spring next year our new titles, and some of our reprinted backlist, will be distributed
by Artbook/DAP in New York (www.artbook.com) and
thus available in the better US bookshops. Most titles
will tend to be available a few months after initial publication in the UK, so the dates below are those for
UK publication.

This new arrangement means that we will be putting many of our out-of-print titles back into print in what
we hope are vastly improved editions. Henceforth our Anti-Classics series will be published as hardbacks with
printed covers, and many of the Arkhives will be revised and reformatted as hardbacks as well.

This paperback in the Heteroclites series collects revised versions of some texts previously published by Atlas
("The Night of Lead" and "Kebad Kenya") and adds new ones to give a broad idea of the obsessions of this uniquely peculiar author.

LAUNCH PRICE: £9 (+ postage) on orders received before the end of October.

Paperback reprinting of Harry Mathews' translation of Roussel's last and most enigmatic play.

LAUNCH PRICE: £7.50 (+ postage) on orders received before the end of October.

FORTHCOMING FROM ATLAS Autumn 2012:

Grayson Perry Cycle of Violence

The definitive edition of Perry's saga of sexual violence, death, redemption and cycling. This graphic novel, originally published by us in 1992, has as its
hero an English winner of the Tour de France named Bradley…
Hardback with a new foreword by the artist.

Robert Desnos Liberty or Love! and Mourning for Mourning

Two Surrealist novels. These two texts published together for the first time in our new hardback format for the Anti-Classics series.

FORTHCOMING FROM ATLAS IN 2013

Georges Perec and The Oulipo Winter Journeys

Perec's most famous short story, followed by sequels by members of the Oulipo, many unpublished even in French. Writing a "Winter Journey" has become a
tradition for new members of the group and this updated version of our previous edition will contain eight new stories (thus some 18 in all). Large hardback.

George Melly Don't Tell Sybil, a memoir of British Surrealism and E.L.T. Mesens

Melly's libidinous memoir with new illustrative material. Paperback.

Marcel Duchamp, Henri-Pierre Roché, Beatrice Wood Three New York Dadas and the Blindman

Includes Victor, Roché's memoir/novel of the US Dada movement and of the triangular relationship between himself, Wood and Duchamp, plus a reprint of the
magazine the three of them edited together (The Blindman), along with Wood's memoir of the period. Hardback.

René Daumal, Roger Gilbert-Lecomte (et al.) Theory of the Great Game

A selection of theoretical and literary texts from the magazine Le Grand Jeu by the group of the same name who explored poetic expression based upon
drug-induced near-death states, among other extreme experiential situations. Contemporaries of the Surrealists in '30s Paris, they refused membership
of that group so as to follow their own unique path. Hardback.

Princess Sappho (Léon Genonceaux) The Tutu, morality of the fin-de-siècle

A great "lost novel". Published in 1891, it was never released to bookshops, since its author quickly realised it would see him
jailed. The novel remained totally unknown for a hundred years and even then only a handful of copies came to light. Described
by French critics as a cross between Alphonse Allais and Lautréamont, this is the most outrageous "decadent novel" ever penned.
At once appalling and funny, it recognises no taboos whatsoever, and one can only speculate what its influence might have been had it
appeared when it was written. The author was the publisher of Rimbaud's poems and Lautréamont's Maldoror. Hardback.

Michel Leiris Aurora and Cardinal Point

Two important Surrealist novels in the new format. Hardback.

NEW FROM THE LONDON INSTITUTE OF ’PATAPHYSICS

A large (very large) drawing by Adam Dant (check him out on Google Images) portraying 150 famous and not so famous pataphysicians along with
their pithy utterances, plus a booklet by Alastair Brotchie expanding a little on the reasons for their selection, the whole contained in a
purpose-made envelope. 499 numbered copies.

A few of these letters appeared in 4 Dada Suicides, this is the totality of their correspondence together with a key letter from Torma to Jean Montmort.

Journal, issue 6. Ray Galton and Alan Simpson The Rebel
Available late November.

Complete shooting script for the film written for, and starring, Tony Hancock. No script for this film has been published and there are significant
differences here with the film as released, including a number of scenes that were cut. Illustrated with reconstructions of Hancock's artworks
by members of the LIP as featured in the group exhibition held ten years ago (a few copies of the catalogue are still available). Below, Magnus Irvin's
reconstruction of Hancock's Self-Portrait.

October 2011

MIT/ATLAS PRESS/LIP BOOK-LAUNCH on 1 November! See end of this news bulletin…

The recent inactivity at Atlas Press has had rather a lot to do with the
imminent publication of this book:

Alfred Jarry A Pataphysical Life by Alastair Brotchie

This is the first full-length biography of Jarry in English and incorporates a
great deal of material new to English readers, and a fair amount that will be
new to French ones. (And no, he was not buried upright astride his bicycle, as
was claimed in a recent literary blog...)

Meanwhile, Atlas Press has not been idle despite the apparent dearth of new
publications. Recently we have been publishing the JOURNAL OF THE LONDON
INSTITUTE OF 'PATAPHYSICS. By the end of this month, four thematic issues will
have appeared:

1. (Angelic issue) Principally featuring a translation of The Comparative
Anatomy of Angels by Dr. Mises (Gustav Theodor Fechner), with additional
texts by Jarry and Robert Irwin.

2. (Paul Etienne Lincoln issue) An Observatory of Collected Cicerones by Paul
Etienne Lincoln. Googling his name will give a fair idea of the range of
preoccupations of this collection.

One of "the most frequently pirated books of all time", Some Limericks by Norman
Douglas (1928), is now issued in a respectable edition by Atlas Press.
Allow us to rephrase that: The once-respectable Atlas Press has forfeited its claim
to decency by reprinting Some Limericks by Norman Douglas, one of the filthiest books
we have ever seen. Even in an age of indecency, we cannot bring ourselves to print a
limerick involving Christ, the Virgin and the Holy Ghost. The only clue to the permutations
thereof we are minded to offer is the variation offered by Douglas —

Thus spake the King of Siam:
"For women I don't give a damn.
Bur a fat-bottomed boy
ls my pride and Joy —
They call me a bugger: I am."

Try reconfiguring it in a version featuring Jesus and the others. The main pleasure to be
had from Some Limericks is Douglas's po-faced, faux·learned commentary. Following
a rhyme which begins "There was a young girl of Pitlochry, / Who was had by a man in a
rockery", Douglas comments, "There are several fine country seats near Pitlochry and
a good many of them have rockeries in their grounds. but the text does not allow us to
decide in which of them this event took place". He does not object, as we would, that
Pitlochry does not rhyme with rockery.
One of the few repeatable limericks in this edition is provided by the publisher:

There was a young man from Peru
Whose limericks stopped at line two.

Not forgetting its ludic relation:

There was a young man from Verdun.

Some Limericks, which costs £l0, is just the thing for Aunt Enid's eightieth birthday.

Boris Vian, Letters to Stanley Chapman.

Facsimile edition of Vian's letters to Stanley Chapman, all but the first written in English.

The occasion of this publication is a sad one: the recent death of Stanley Chapman, President of
the London Institute of 'Pataphysics, Regent of the Collège de 'Pataphysique,
founder-member of the Oulipo, translator extraordinaire, and good friend...
The Times Literary Supplement also reviewed this title, albeit a little inaccurately, publication
was jointly by Bookartbookshop and Atlas Press for the London Institute:

Inspired by our commemoration of Boris Vian (NB, luly 17 and August 21 & 28),
Alastair Brotchie sends us a fascinating booklet which he has published himself, under the
imprint bookartbookshop, Letters to Stanley Chapman contains a brief correspondence
with the English writer responsible for transtatlng Vian's novels L'Écume des jours
(Froth on the Daydream) and L'Arrache-coeur (Heartsnatcher). Brotchie reproduces
the letters in facsimile — only seven in all, but some run to several pages. The majority are
in fluent English, "which I don't speak", Vian explains. "neither do I write it, you
know". They are typically full of puns, many of them obscene: in one letter alone (October,
1955), we remarked "arse-stonishingly", "inside aunt Ally" (incidentally), "French
vocal bullery" and "cuntemporary".
The better part of the correspondence concerns "some crazy and atrocious lyrics for
French 'Rock and Roll' things" by Vian, which he invites Chapman to translate.
"Enclosed are three of the worst", he writes in September 1956, at the height of his
involvement in the music business (Vian worked for Philips, where his boss was
Jacques Canetti, brother of Elias). It would be "nothing" for him to write his own English
words "on the horrible music", but he thought "nice little Stanley" might do "an adaptation.
We could co-sign and share the income".
The results lack the sprightly idiocy of the original. "Rock and Roll-Mops" is the story
of a couple who work up a good appetite by rocking all night. When they ask a local bar-
owner what`s on the menu, he offers a variety of dishes — liver of lion, kangaroo escalope,
horse's eggs — which the grateful lovers consume before "on va r'toumer s'coucher!"
In his letter to us, Mr Brotchie remarks that there are "not so many Vian enthusiasts this
side of the water". There are a few, though. and all will wish to read Letters to Stanley
Chapman, available at £13 from 17 Pitfield Street. London Nl 6HB.

And while we're at it, the TLS also reviewed our other small book by Boris Vian,
'Pataphysics? What's That?:

Alastair Brotchie, the publisher of Boris Vian?s Letters to Stanley Chapman (see
NB, September 4) has sent us another Vian booklet, 'Pataphysics, What's That?, based
on a French radio programme broadcast in l959. The question has perturbed us. We've
heard of it .... We know we ought to know. but . . . 'Pataphysics, what's that?
Searching Vian's text for an answer, we drew a blank. We approached Mr Brotchie:
"'Pataphysics, what's that?" He pataphysically replied: "Not an easy task. The point of
the Vian piece is to show how it is easier to demonstrate what 'Pataphysics is than to
define it". Rather than demonstrate it, Mr Brotchie offered to send us "a small tome",
'Pataphysics: Definitions & citations.
Opening at random, we found this definition: "'Pataphysics is the whole sausage"
(Siegfried Krakauer), which led us to wonder
if we were being made the butt of a joke.
Better to ask Georges Perec, an oracle in such matters: "Physics proposes: 'You have it
brother and he likes cheese'. Metaphysics replies: 'If you have a brother, he likes
cheese'. But 'Pataphysics says, 'You don't have a brother and he likes cheese"'. Justin
Saget tells us that "Denial of knowledge is the first and last word of 'Pataphysics",
Sergei Eisenstein that Charlie Chaplin "had a weakness? for it, Ionesco that 'Pataphysics is
"an elaborately constructed hoax".
At least we were getting somewhere. Who better to settle the matter, than Vian himself,
cited in the small tome: "'Pataphysics will always be plunging ahead because it is
always static in time, and because time itself is retrograde by detinition". lt?s a rare feeling
when confusion clears.

August 2008

Publications for autumn 2008

Further to the recent announcement of publication of Gadda's wonderful
Philosophers' Madonna, news is now available about the next two Atlas Press
titles, expected in October or November, plus an earlier title now
available again:

Semmelweis
Louis-Ferdinand Céline

The first work by a major French author

"It is not every day we get a thesis such as Céline wrote on Semmelweis!"
Henry Miller, The Books in My Life

Louis-Ferdinand Céline (1894-1961) is best known for his early novels
Journey to the End of the Night (1932), which Charles Bukowski described
as the greatest novel of the past 2,000 years, and Death on the Instalment
Plan (1936), but this delirious, fanatical and unreasonable biography
predates them both.

The astounding yet true story of the life of Ignaz Semmelweis
provided Céline with a narrative whose appalling events and bizarre twists
would have lain beyond credibility in a work of pure fiction.

Semmelweis (1818-1865), now regarded as the father of antisepsis,
was the first to diagnose correctly the cause of the staggering mortality
rates in the maternity hospital in Vienna; his colleagues, however,
rejected both his reasoning and his methods, thereby causing many thousands
of unnecessary deaths in maternity wards across Europe. This episode, one
of the most infamous in the history of medicine, along with its
disastrous effects on Semmelweis himself, is the subject of Céline's
semi-fictional evocation, one in which his violent descriptive genius is
already apparent. It is the passionate account of a man persecuted for the
simple fact of revealing the truth. The overriding theme of Céline's later
works finds its first expression in this book: a caustic despair, verging
on disgust, for humanity as a whole. And yet, for those familiar with his
other works, the surprise of this first book is that he simultaneously
reveals more compassionate aspects of his character...

While originally written as a thesis towards his medical doctorate
in 1924, Semmelweis was not published until 1936, after the novels which
had made him famous. He was soon to become notorious for his collaboration
with the Nazi regime of occupied France.

Cantatrix Sopranica L., Scientific Papers
Georges Perec

A collection of Perec's scientific writings

Georges Perec (1936-1982) became the most celebrated French writer of his
generation, his novel Life A User's Manual winning the Prix Médicis in
1978. Perec from the start was fascinated by the possibility of employing
non-fictional languages for altogether more mischievous purposes and this
book collects together various texts in which he uses the expressionless
terminology of sociology, entomology and linguistics to achieve effects
they are distinctly designed to avoid.

Perec was of course also an illustrious member of the Oulipo, a
group of writers which is still very much active, who explore the
possibilities of employing artificial systems in literature. Perhaps the
most famous work to emerge from their researches was La Disparition, again
by Perec, a full-length novel which avoids the use of any words containing
the letter e (it is translated as A Void).

Not surprisingly, the present book is experimental, but it is also
strange, preposterous and entertaining...

Also, a roll of the dice never quite removing the possibility that chance
will intervene, recent excavations have revealed a smallish quantity of our
Max Jacob,
The Dice Cup, so this is now back in print while rediscovered
stocks last.

And from the LIP
to mark the centenary of Alfred Jarry's death on 1 November:
Alfred Jarry Necrologies, texts by Apollinaire, Rachilde, Saltas and his
doctor: first-hand accounts of his last days.

August 2007

New Books and Forthcoming Titles

now available:

The Complete Works of Urmuz
The collected short and absurdist stories of the Romanian writer "Urmuz",
dating from the early years of the twentieth century up until their
author's death in 1923. Urmuz's work has been claimed as a forerunner of
Dada, and of Surrealism as well, and shows again the sharp sense of the
vitality of the avant-garde amongst Romanian practitioners. These stories
appear in translation by Miron and Carola Grindea, with an introduction by
the former, and the book constitutes the penultimate issue of the Printed
Head, series IV. £6

The free subscribers-only issue, and slipcase for the full set, are now in
preparation.

The Deliquescences of Adoré Floupette
A collection of Decadent poems, with an extended Life of the Poet, which
was published originally in 1885, only for it to become apparent in short
order that it was in fact a literary hoax and the confection of the two
minor poets Henri Beauclair and Gabriel Vicaire. The book soon garnered a
reputation for the quality of its parody, for successfully hoodwinking some
critics and for entertaining those in on the joke, and is today recognised
both as one of the earliest exemplars of the genre of hoax writings, and as
a key contemporary work for all those interested in the French literature
of the 1890s.
Poems and Life have been put into a fine translation by Stanley Chapman,
while an Afterword by Paul Edwards discusses the work's context,
significance, and pun-hidden references.
Published with slipcase in an edition of 1000 copies (plus 33 numbered
copies for the London Institute of 'Pataphysics, all sold), £16
A special launch price of £12 applies until 15 September.

imminently available:

the sixth sense
The masterful and thoroughly enjoyable novel by Konrad Bayer, in its first
translation, by Malcolm Green, into English and with a suite of
illustrations by Günter Brus done especially for this edition. With
consummate facility Bayer combined in this work an omnivorous approach to
textual collage with a full range of teasing wordplays and linguistic
disruptions, telling a story which certainly has its autobiographical roots
but which also finds different ways to examine questions of time,
mortality, and identity. The writing visits every tram-stop on the line
from nonsensical slapstick to lambent beauty, while Bayer's warm and
generous humour accompanies us as we learn what it is to have this sixth
sense.
Published in an edition limited to 999 numbered copies, of which the first
fifty are slipcased and signed by the artist.
£14 for the standard edition, with a special launch price of £10 until 28
September.
£35 for the signed edition, without discount and limited to one copy per
buyer only, with orders being taken now whilst the slipcases are being
finished.

shortly available:

A Game of War
First published in 1987, this running commentary with diagrams, by Alice
Becker-Ho and Guy Debord, of a war game of their own devising, saw its
initial print-run pulped on Debord's instructions in 1991 and consequently
became a Situationist rarity. The rules were explicitly designed so as to
reduce the elements of warfare to their most universally applicable basics,
and the interaction of the two opponents, as described in the course of 55
pairs of move and response, is portrayed in a similarly pared-down and
immediate style. Minimal apparatus, and a few pages of related notes found
amongst Debord's papers, complete the book as it appears in Donald
Nicholson-Smith's commanding translation.
Published in a special edition which includes board and counters to allow
readers to play their own game of war, all contained in a slipcase.
Priced at £20 but available for £17 for one month after publication
(expected mid-October).

available a little later:

Mirror of Tauromachy
A slim but characteristically dense piece of writing by Michel Leiris on
the subject of bullfighting, with powerful and often erotic illustrations
by André Masson, as translated by Paul Hammond. In a shorter first section,
Leiris describes the course and acts of a bullfight in a series of
sometimes poetic, sometimes aphoristic tableaux, with the key movements and
elements described in a style at once trim and concise, graceful and
rhythmic. The remainder of the book is taken up with an excursus which
allows Leiris to follow his anthropological curiosities, and to discuss the
wider significance of the bullfight in terms of its relation to mythology
and social importance, sacrifice and religion, ceremony and performance,
vitality and eroticism.
Published in an edition limited to 1000 copies, and expected late October.
£16, with a special launch price of £12 for the first month of publication.

April 2007

Recent Publications of the LIP, Forthcoming Publications from Atlas Press

The Atlas Press website has two new publications from the London Institute
of 'Pataphysics which may be of more general interest:

Boris Vian 'Pataphysics? What's That?
Transcript of a radio interview given by Boris Vian and Henri Salvador for
French radio one month before Vian's death.

Asger Jorn et al. Pataphysics as Religion, 'Pataphysics as Apostasy
Jorn's essay Pataphysics, A Religion in the Making followed by a
reply from the Collège de 'Pataphysique. Various more-or-less appalling
translations of Jorn's text can be found on the web, but this one is
accurate!
WEBPAGE

Also published by the LIP and now available:

Kevin Jackson The Pataphysical Flook
The comic strips which appeared long-term in The Daily Mail are revealed to
have had a number of references to 'Pataphysics and to Jarry's writings
smuggled in, and on to the breakfast tables of unsuspecting middle England.
Signed edition with signatures of Jackson, George Melly, and Trog.
WEBPAGE

Andrew Lanyon Circular Walks Around Rowley Hall
The slipcased and limited edition is now available, 99 copies published for
the London Institute of 'Pataphysics, numbered and signed by Andrew Lanyon
and with individual original collage plates tipped in.
WEBPAGE

Forthcoming from Atlas Press. We have an extensive programme of new books
that is about to begin. The next few publications will be (and probably in
this order):

The Deliquescences of Adoré Floupette. The famous pastiche of Decadent
poetry by Henri Beauclair and Gabriel Vicaire originally published in 1885.
This first English translation is by Stanley Chapman.

Urmuz Complete Works. The last issue of the Printed Head apart from the
free issue for subscribers. We will try and finish off this series and send
out slipcases soon to all returning subscribers...

Alice Becker-Ho and Guy Debord A Game of War. The book of Guy Debord's
war game. This edition will be the first which actually includes the
board and counters and will allow readers to play out the game.

Konrad Bayer the sixth sense. Bayer's last book, with illustrations by
Günter Brus commissioned for this edition (there will be a limited edition
signed by him).

Alfred Jarry Three Early Novels (Collected Works II). Contains Days and
Nights, Exploits and Opinions of Dr. Faustroll, Pataphysician, Absolute
Love.

(Alastair Brotchie has been writing a full-length biography of Jarry to be
published by MIT Press next year, and a few Jarry-related off-shoots from
this project will appear through Atlas Press in the near future, notably a
selection of his letters, and his contributions to L'Ymagier and
Perhindérion.)

Michel Leiris The Mirror of Tauromachy, illustrated by André Masson.

Marcel Duchamp, Henri-Pierre Roché, Beatrice Wood Three New York Dadas and
The Blindman. New York Dada in 1916-17, contains Roché's roman à clef of
the group, Victor (Marcel Duchamp), extracts from Wood's memoirs and a
complete facsimile reprint of the magazine they edited together, The
Blindman.

Carlo Emilio Gadda The Philosophers' Madonna. His first novel.

In the Anti-Classic series, there will be improved reprints of Aurora by
Leiris and Liberty or Love! by Desnos, as well as the first issue of
Oulipo Papers (selected translations from the Bibliothèque Oulipienne).

February 2007

Emmett Williams has departed from these shores
at the age of 81. We shall all miss him. According to his wife,
Ann Noël, Emmett had spent the day in his studio working on some
new pieces and the evening over a glass or two of red wine; he
died quietly in his own bed on the eve of Valentines Day –
an institution he made wonderfully his own in his book Valentine
for Noel. In place of an obituary, here a piece written during his
last years that testifies to his enduring vitality and sheer
likeability.

“Emmett at Eighty”

The internationally acclaimed poet, performer and picture-maker
Emmett Williams, grand old man of Fluxus, is eighty.

Not every octogenarian manages to pull off such a fine bash for
his eightieth birthday party as Emmett Williams did on April 8th
at the Freie Akademie für Kunst in Berlin. And it wasn't
just a question of quality entertainment but also a quality crowd,
the sort where you start thinking "if they were all regulars
at the same bar I'd like to know the address", the kind you'd
like to meet at every art event or private view, a scintillating crowd,
all ages, not just a bunch of art scene liggers and Fluxus groupies or
people attracted by the free food and drinks (there were two of those
there, but I forget their names). No, it was clear that the crowd was
genuinely there for The Emmett Williams Experience. And even he enjoyed
it, against his worst expectations.
It highlighted one of those apparently non-art questions about artists
that are in fact so important: what is it that makes or allows such a
fellow to have so many nice, intelligent, friendly friends, for that
was the main common denominator? Well, for one thing, Emmett Williams
has had rather a lot of job descriptions in his time, and fulfilled the
agendas pretty well — that brings you friends, or respect at least:
performance artist, graphic artist, celebrated Editor-in-Chief of Dick
Higgins' celebrated Something Else Press, painter, translator and annotator,
multi-anthologist and proselytist. This is just to list the normal stuff.
For even if Emmett pours scorn on the "I-was-first" game, a few ironically
proud facts seep through in his books and conversations: not only was he
the first person ever to write the word "Fluxus" in a press publication
(now that is a claim to fame), he was even the first person to coin the
word "gallerist" in English. Apparently. The more arcane it gets, the
prouder the man should be: co-inventor (with Robert Filliou) of the
Spaghetti-Sandwich, water-ballet choreographer, Fluxus postage stamp
designer, hermeneutist of the exabiphallus…. There seems to be no
end to it. But above all Mr Williams is first and foremost a poet,
"capital P, without any qualifiers," as he points out. And the kind of
poet he is throws a very strong light on why he has such nice friends.

Emmett Williams is not the kind of poet who sits up all night in his
garret honing his little gems to perfection. He must have long since
realised there is no such a thing as a perfect poem, just as there is no
such thing as a perfect piece of music; but sometimes there is the perfect
moment or situation to listen to precisely that piece, or that poem. Emmett's
poetry and — jumping ahead slightly — performance pieces seem
however to sidestep the issue by seeking or prompting the situation first,
or by creating the possibility of a situation, and then letting things
take their turn… A perfect sidestep, which also helped Emmett Williams
escape the "I've got it" syndrome that bedevils so many concrete and
conceptualist works, whether poems or paintings or whatever: where once you
have "got the idea" you're finished, that's it, you can move on because
there's nothing more to the piece. Reading Williams' poems is almost always
an invitation to keep on going, as long as one wants, they simply do not end
at the end of the last page or the end of the book. As, for example, in
"duet" which begins:

"art of my dartarrow of my marrow"…

and ends:

"zim zam zom of my o zim o zam o zoom".

In between the poet offers two versions for every letter of the alphabet
("butter of my abutter… cope of my scope" etc.), and with each line
the reader finds him- or herself joining in the game, finding new funny
examples. This is a real word game not in the sense of a pun but as a ludic
enterprise for all. And by setting up an open-ended possibility the author
goes way beyond the simple permutation that even characterised his earlier
work, and that generally has exhausted itself before one even starts reading
it.
The wealth of possibility in Williams' work is also amply demonstrated by
the sheer size (and majesty) of another poem, sweethearts. In this
book-length work, a small, wiggly 11-letter serpent of a word —
"sweethearts" — turns round and investigates its own premises, the
letters that make up its own self, taking a taste of its tail and then
merrily chomping itself up into primal lumps which it ingests and then
eagerly egests into a flood of new words and worlds - as a story of two
lovers and their ears and what they hear, of the sea and what these lovers
see. … Emmett had been poetasting for some years when he wrote
Sweethearts, but not only did this work masterfully transform concrete
poetry into the epic, it also brought warmth, eroticism and humour into an
often tight-assed genre. By creating an open-ended starting point rather
than marshal the words or letters to fit some foreordained idea, he went
on a voyage of discovery. The fetters he placed on himself, or on the words,
were liberating ones because the only limits to the project were his wit
and wits and his desire to travel on and take us to where the idea took him.

The same is equally true of the other parts of Emmett's motley oeuvre,
most particularly the large number of performances he has written and
staged… A glance at almost any of the scores reveals a piece of
simplicity that is able to generate tens of dozens of new variations and
unpredictable situations: Allowing 38 Virgin Marys to arrive and shake hands
on stage… walking or running about on stage with a glass or bottle
balanced on one's head, and singing or speaking until the glass or bottle
falls off… talking in a spontaneously invented language ("The Gift
of Tongues")… counting all the members of the audience from the stage,
aloud, silently, repeatedly, collecting their autographs, giving them
presents and asking for others in return while all the time counting
them… playing Brahms Academic Festival Overture in reverse, such
that even the performers enter backwards… or performing 26 actions
assigned to the letters of the alphabet, from eating a cake dog-style on
the floor to pouring a bottle of sparkling wine down your trousers, in the
order the letters are drawn out of a hat, with different actions each
performance… simple ideas or a draft of a situation that go beyond
merely acting out a script to involve a wealth of spontaneous interactions,
interest, and associations.

It is the sly openness of these pieces that makes Williams' work so
engaging — a fact not spoilt when he shows a great taste in targets
in the spirited attacks he also sometimes delivers — and ergo wins him
a lot of nice friends. And perhaps this all reflects back on the man —
which slowly brings us back to that great party, which also showed another
reason for Emmett's enduring popularity, and not only as a person. Before
the explosive wit of his old Fluxus comrade, Ben Patterson, brought a series
of dedicated events to an end that evening by gleefully letting off outdoor
fireworks indoors – a pyrotechnic breach of good common sense that grew
all the brighter the more the proprietor blanched — a couple of old
Emmett pieces were given a delightful airing by several much younger artists.
But it wasn't just an airing, as if the pieces had been in mothballs for
four or so decades (and that's how old they were): the pieces were as fresh
and saucy as if they had just been written, because the situation was new.
They are inevitably new every time they are performed, so long as no one
gets taken by the idea that there is something in them that has to be
historically accurate and authentic. (Revealingly, Emmett Williams freely
admits to cheating while performing his pieces if he thinks that will make
them better, thus confirming that they are only more authentic if they are
more poetic, in this case more true to the situation). Emmett Williams has
perhaps summarised this irreverent approach to his own work when he says
it is "a kind of game, but so is life". At eighty Emmett has had lot of
life, but as with everything else in his world he seems to have a special
relationship to time.

Bald since he was 17, apart from a hirsute but wonderfully fitting laurel
wreath he wears to this day, Emmett once remarked that he has "often
managed very well to look older than [his] years". Yet even when looking
older than he really was (physically), this never seems to have made him
feel any need to act either his apparent age, or indeed his real (physical)
age. This is no less true now that he is eighty, although carefully
preserved down the decades by choice beverages and recently with a new
flush in his cheeks thanks to a nutritionist and lots of minerals and
vitamins. At eighty he almost seems to be reversing the process and looking
younger than his years. Not to forget those size 12 feet, which on a man of
modest (physical) stature still lend him the playful look of an oversized
puppy. Kind of fitting. But it's his mind that has resisted time the best,
being as acute and astute as ever; and of course his good ole' warm,
human heart.

Malcolm Green

September 2006

NEW PUBLICATIONS FROM ATLAS PRESS AND THE LONDON
INSTITUTE OF 'PATAPHYSICS, a launch party, and a review of our edition
of Hans Bellmer's The Doll.

Circular Walks is a sort-of-novel that recounts the curious history of
three characters: Vera, Mervyn and Walter Rowley; and of two locations:
Rowley Hall and the Cornish town of St. Ives.

The human protagonists are three members of a family devoted to outlandish
experimentation, mostly upon themselves or each other. Vera, the levitating
psychoanalyst, explores the effects of geology on thought and language;
Walter, a retired vivisectionist, preys on artists in the hope of forcibly
curing them of their vile creative habits; meanwhile Mervyn, his father, is
busy eradicating his son's efforts by secretly creating strange cinematic
extravaganzas and sculptures disguised as scientific apparatus. Or at least
that's what happens on one level…

In fact this is an indefinable book in which both text and image are given
equal weight. A state of play (in both senses of the word) exists between
them, words provoke images and images text, and a literal visualisation of a
joyous creativity is brought into being. It's a tour-de-force that is at once
Gothic narrative, philosophical enquiry, comic novel, a eulogy of the tragic
history of St. Ives and the Cornish landscape and an eloquent demonstration
of the processes underlying its own creation.

Andrew Lanyon has been bringing out the Rowley books in beautiful limited
editions for the past 20 years. This selection from the first 12 of them
is the first time their remarkable content has been made more generally
available. The author is the son of one of the foremost of the St. Ives
artists, Peter Lanyon, and so was brought up in the strange atmosphere of
a fishing village overwhelmed with "high culture"; his ambivalent feelings
about this invasion underpin the narrative.

Simultaneously published by the same author: A Fairy Find,
Portobello Books.

Circular Walks is published for Atlas Press in an edition of 1100
copies, paperback in slipcase, 176 pp., at £18 but now available at a launch
price to our emailing list of £13 until 20 October. There is a signed,
cased edition of 99 copies soon to be available from the LIP.

LAUNCH PARTY. There will be a launch and exhibition of Andrew
Lanyon's work in central London on 12 October. We have a limited number of
invitations available for the Private View: contact us if you want one,
first come, first served…

Jean Baudrillard
Pataphysics, Departmental Papers of the LIP, DDT 2.

Baudrillard was recently revealed to have been a lifelong member of the
Collège de 'Pataphysique and this text was written in 1950 in response
to the founding of the Collège, although only recently published in
French. This first English translation is by Simon Watson Taylor, the last
thing he completed before his recent death, and a memorial bookmark is
enclosed. It predates Baudrillard's better known works by some 17 years.
The LIP edition is letterpress-printed on fine paper with rag paper wrappers
in an edition of 177 numbered copies (the 44 signed copies are already
sold out).
WEBPAGE

The transcript of a radio programme with Boris Vian originally broadcast
in May 1959, and containing a brief sketch by Vian performed by himself
and the singer/Pataphysician Henri Salvador. Intended as an accessible
introduction to 'Pataphysics, this very funny text was Vian's last written
work before his death the following month. The translation is by Stanley
Chapman, and the edition signed by him contains a facsimile of one of the
many extraordinary letters Vian wrote to him in English when they were
working on translating his songs; it begins: "Dear Chap-man, Call me a
shitty baboon, or anything else, and I won't object…"
WEBPAGE

Hans Bellmer
This book has been selling well and the imminent Klossowski/Bellmer
exhibition at The Whitechapel Gallery in London will arouse more interest
in this, his seminal work.

We all have our lists of small publishers that are candidates for their
own kind of sainthood, and England's Atlas Press - perhaps best known in
the United States for their marvelous Oulipo Compendium, recently
released in a second, revised and expanded edition - have clinched their
nomination with this, the first complete English translation of Hans
Bellmer's Die Puppe, originally issued in 1934. The book is a
hybrid, and in both form and content somewhat prophetic. Bellmer's prose
is a cross between poem, memoir, manifesto, and philosophical treatise,
setting out his theories of how the body is perceived, and how, indeed,
the operation of both our minds and our bodies already aspire to a kind
of surrealism, exemplified in play both physical (with dolls), and mental
(in misunderstandings, in texts and dreams). Most particularly, Bellmer
instructs us on how desire informs our awareness of reality, and thus
how striking disjunctions of erotic imagery can pique new and more
poignant forms of this productive lust - as exemplified by his
constructions and sketches. Malcolm Green's translation brings out
Bellmer's mesmerizing, occasionally sinister voice wonderfully: a voice
so convinced of its own internal coherence - happy to provide examples
in prose and poetry to substantiate his claims, each of which becomes
its own little gem, achieving a tone reminiscent of Wittgenstein,
Blanchot, and Klossowski by turns - that it has an intoxicating effect
on the reader, regardless of whether Bellmer manages to persuade. And
then there are the dolls - first constructed in order to challenge the
burgeoning Nazi ideal of flawless, symmetrical beauty - here accompanied
by the prose poetry of Paul Éluard. The images are astounding,
alarming, and gorgeously reproduced: photographs colored by Bellmer almost
to belie the physicality of what's being depicted (the eye wants to see
the pictures as flat, harmless paintings). Legs turn into arms into necks,
thighs conjoin, attached to no known waist. In brief, this is an essential
book, both as a work of art and a treatise on the malleability of the body
- a concept that has only become more relevant since Bellmer's passing.
This edition is limited to a thousand copies… rush over to the
Atlas website and get yours before it's too late. [Jeremy M. Davies]

Happy New Year! … and for your entertainment, an email we recently
received:

Hello, I hope that you will be able to help me. You are my last resort -
I have been hopelessly trying to find the book "The Shepherd" that has a
copyright date of 1979. If I remember correctly it was written by Flossie
Peters, it is a brown covered book with a picture of Authur Atlas Peters
on the cover. It is about Rev. Peters and how he cam to be the shepherd
of Victory Baptist Church among other things that he was involved in at
the time the book was written. Can you help me?
I thank you in advance for any and all
assistance you can provide me regarding this book.
Looking forward to hearing from you soon.
Regards,
xxx

July 2006

THE RETURN OF THE PRINTED HEAD

Yes - after an extremely protracted interval, the result of various
organisational problems, we are glad to say that publication of series IV
of the Printed Head is at last resumed, and in fact the next two fascicles
are now available. These are both double issues and are

From a cycle of works known as the "Archives of Silence", On the Brink
revolves around the murders carried out by the law student and serial
killer Alois Jenner, and his reflections, and the behaviour of his
schizophrenic friend Franz Lindner who escapes into madness. Roth, one of
Austria's most important living authors and whose magnificent
autobiography
of albert einstein (Atlas Press, 1992) is now very nearly out of print, has
his novel illustrated with three portraits by Brus, whose work as a Vienna
Actionist is fully documented in our
Arkhive volume on the group.

Edition of 300 copies in total, single issue £9
The signed edition (50 copies signed by Roth and Brus) is only available to
subscribers to the series, and is £18

The Dada writings of the celebrated De Stijl architect Theo van Doesburg,
the majority of which appeared under a pseudonym. In addition to the
near-dozen shorter texts, dating from the early 1920s, this collection
includes the author's exercise in automatic writing, his "novel" The Other
Sight. An extended introduction by the translator Michael White gives a
thorough survey of the Dada tour of Holland made by Van Doesburg,
Schwitters and associates at the start of 1923.

While both books are available to buy individually in the usual way,
subscribers to this current series of the Printed Head are warmly invited
to resume their subscription, whether to signed or non-signed editions, and
are asked to confirm this with a brief message to
Chris Allen;
in this way the particular cases of individual
subscribers can be looked after as needed.

New subscribers are also welcome to join, though only non-signed
subscriptions are available, and for further information again please write
to Chris.

It is worth pointing out that since the Printed Head began its erratic
journey the books and especially complete sets have risen steadily in price
on the antiquarian market, as for instance the Brus issue from the first
series,
picturepoems,
which nowadays fetches upwards of £50 a copy
(unsigned). Other books have seen their authors move from corners of
relative obscurity into a limier sort of light, most notably Grayson Perry,
whose (rather) graphic novel,
Cycle of Violence,
first came out as an issue of PH II.

Other News

The second volume in our Collected Works of Alfred Jarry will
shortly be going to print, but before that we shall be publishing a curious
and marvellous collection of some of the marvellous and curious works of
the artist and writer Andrew Lanyon - you are invited to join us for
Circular Walks Around Rowley Hall.

October 2005

NEW TITLES

Two Atlas titles now back in print, redesigned, and in the case of the
Compendium, revised and updated.

OULIPO COMPENDIUM
Edited by Harry Mathews & Alastair Brotchie

Oulipo Compendium is a late 20th-century kabala, a labyrinth of literary
secrets that will lure the unitiated into rethinking everything they know
about books and writing. A nutty, one-of-a-kind book, the definitive
encyclopaedia of contemporary word-magic. PAUL AUSTER

An indispensable book for everyone who cares about literature. SUSAN SONTAG

We have three new titles either published or forthcoming. They are briefly
described here, the links provided give more detail with photographs and
artwork.. But first:

HARRY MATHEWS IN CONVERSATION

With Mark Ford (to be confirmed), to celebrate the publication of "My Life
in the CIA" (Dalkey Archive Press) at London Review Bookshop, Bury Place, WC1A 2JL.
12 July 2005 at 7 pm.
Tickets (advance booking only) £4 from the shop, or by phone (020 7269
9030) or by email (events@lrbshop.co.uk).

PUBLISHED

Hans Bellmer • The Doll
The first publication of Bellmer's final version of this book, which
includes three important theoretical texts (including "The Anatomy of the
Image"), a suite of poems by Paul Eluard, 15 colour photographs, 10 in black and white,
plus numerous line drawings.
To be published in November 2005. A limited edition of 1000 copies,
paperbound in a slipcase, 160 pp., £20.
Copies are available for sale now, however, and until the end of June 2005
at a pre-publication price of £15.
WEBPAGE -
PDF flyer -
PURCHASE

FORTHCOMING

Harry Mathews & Alastair Brotchie "Oulipo Compendium", revised and updated
edition. Finally the re-print...!
336 pp., 23 x 21 cm, paperback, numerous photos and line illustrations.
For publication in November 2005 at £19.99. Copies available late August
and orders now being accepted at the pre-publication price of £15.
Contact Chris Allen for further information.
PDF flyer

FORTHCOMING

Arthur Cravan, Jacques Rigaut, Julien Torma, Jacques Vaché "4 Dada
Suicides". Selected texts with introductions to each author and personal
recollections by their contemporaries.
A limited edition of 1000 copies, paperbound in a slipcase, 238 pp., £20.
Publication: 1 November 2005.
Copies available from around September at a pre-publication price of £15.
Advance orders now being accepted.
Contact Chris Allen for further information.
PDF flyer